The size of nations matters, but the literature on the subject is long on theory and short on direct econometric testing. Using a unique time series data set spanning the past two millennia, we study the process of unification and division in historical China. The empirical results are...

We model a game to show that the taxation level in an autocracy reflects the state¡¯s coercive power relative to people¡¯s capacity for violence. The model also specifies the mechanisms through which various factors affect relative state power. The model predicts that taxation level...

Nomadic conquests have helped to shape world history, yet we know little about why they occurred. Using climate and dynastic data from historical China since 221 BCE, this study finds that the likelihood of nomadic conquest increased with less rainfall proxied by drought disasters, which drove...

China provides an interesting case study of civil conflict because of her long history and rich records. Using a unique dynastic panel dataset for north China during 25-1911 CE, this study finds that severe famines and dynastic age were positively correlated with peasant uprisings, whereas...

This note extends the simultaneous-move endogenous technology choice model of Mills and Smith (1996) in two directions. First, expanding consideration to when the technology set is sufficiently convex, we find that the likelihood for asymmetric equilibrium in technology choice does not expand...

Multiple prizes are usually awarded in contests (e.g., internal promotions, school admissions, sports, etc.) and players exert effort to increase their chances for winning a higher prize. A multi-prize contest model must provide each player's probabilities of winning each prize as functions of...

In this paper, we identify a set of axioms that is necessary and sufficient for axiomatizing the reverse nested lottery contest proposed by Fu, Lu and Wang (2014), which is the "mirror image" of the conventional nested lottery contest of Clark and Riis (1996). This paper thus provides an...